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Electronic Body Music, more commonly referred to as EBM, is a genre of alternative electronic music with a history spanning over three decades. The classic EBM sound can be characterized by minimal synth and rhythm structures combined with "clean" production techniques.
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As IDM shares many influences with mainstream genres of electronic music such as Techno and House, many of the hardware synthesizers, grooveboxes and drum machines popular in the 1980s and 1990s acid and rave culture have found their way into IDM as well. The Roland TB-303 and TR-606 are two of the most noteworthy pieces of equipment to fall under this category.
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Being one of the earliest electronic music subgenres established, synthpop has its roots firmly set in vintage analog synthesis. Some of the first pre-synthpop recordings of the early 1960s were made with early synthesizer technologies, however it was not until the 1970s when Moog, ARP, Korg, Roland and others began producing a new wave of powerful synthesizers that the genre was able to come into its own.
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The vast differences between various breakcore artists is reflected in the variety of musical equipment they often use. Common gear ranges from trackers such as Renoise to analog synthesizers and drum machines to cutting edge effects processors.
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As the genre draws influences from rock and post-punk as well as electronic music scenes, industrial rock bands typically make use of a variety of both acoustic and electronic music equipment.
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Industrial guitars, shouted vocals and high-tempo electronic drums are common elements of digital hardcore. While equipment such as the Roland TR-909 was critical for early digital hardcore acts such as Atari Teenage Riot, other bands have used a variety of gear including the relatively inexpensive Yamaha SU10, demonstrating that no particular piece of equipment is necessary to create digital hardcore.
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While EBM was experiencing a surge in popuarlity in Europe in the early 1980s, electronic bands in North American such as Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly were establishing a far more experimental sound. Now known as electro-industrial, the genre is defined by harsh, distorted and complex rhythms and synth lines.
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Drawing inspiration from noise music, electro-industrial and IDM, rhythmic noise combines harsh synths with heavily distorted beats.
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Dark ambient musicians have been heavily influenced by advances in music equipment over the years. From the genre’s beginnings, it has always been predominately electronic though some dark ambient artists make use of organic and acoustic sound sources as well.
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Industrial metal combines heavy metal guitar riffs with synthesizer lines and industrial production techniques. As a result, the gear used by industrial metal bands typically includes both hardware and software synthesizers as well as electric guitars and guitar-oriented effects processors. Drums used in industrial metal may often be acoustic, electronic or a mixture of both.
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As there is very little in the way of stylistic guidelines to define noise music, there are also no requirements for the gear used in its creation. Noise can be made using traditional instruments, examples of which can be seen in the Free Jazz and Noise Rock scenes, or using various non-instruments and “found sounds” (recordings of non-instrumental sounds and noises). Early noise music was often made by splicing together recordings made on tape machines, a process that to a large extent has been replaced by modern samplers.
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